Domain name or subdomain

The majority of Internet marketer suggest we buy many domain names, one for each product we create. Buying a domain name implies periodic expenses. The frequency of these expenses can be annual, when we talk about domain name registration for example, or monthly fees like web site hosting. The advantage of web site hosting is that many sites can be stored on the same account without requiring additional costs. In my case, all my sites are on the same server, and until now I haven't had any particular problems with that approach. But if the traffic becomes to intense, then we must think about switching to another server for the additional web sites, or to operate with one distinct server per site. The good side to this kind of problem is that the abundance of traffic will generate revenues, so if we have more money we have the means to pay for an additional server to host our site.

Following my experience, to purchase a domain name is no guarantee that your product or service will generate sales as you would expect. Buying a domain name can be justified only if the new site is completely different than your old one. For example: I have two blogs on self-esteem, one in Spanish, the other in french. We're talking about two completely different public, two different languages, even if we're talking about the same subject, This is why I have two separate domain names for these sites. The site in Spanish is called http://tecnicasparalaautoestima.info/ and the one in french is http://techniquespourlestimedesoi.info/blog/. In the case of the blog in Spanish I have created a site for membership and another one for audio books within the folders of the blog in Spanish. This does not prevent the registration of the visitors to the membership, nor their purchasing of audio books. The most important point is that this setup doesn't cause any additional charges for me.

To validate this structure I followed the advice of Internet marketers and I purchased a domain name for my new audio book about meditation. This did not yield any result, only additional costs. Why? Maybe the sales page is not appealing enough, or that there is to much competition for meditation books in the Spanish market, could be. But I believe the root cause is that this new sales site is not linked to another one which contains complementary information. Even if I promoted this site - http://www.meditacioniluminacion.com/ - in my own self-esteem blog in Spanish and in the Facebook page of the Spanish website, it did not take off like for the other self-esteem products where the links are already available within the blog and which share the same domain name. To summarize, the site about the meditation audiobooks is somewhat isolated in its own domain name and it is possible that people do not have the same trust level than on the sites within the blogs in Spanish

From what I observed to purchase a domain name cannot be justified when creating training material or an Internet product like an ebook or an audio book. This will generate useless costs and more management, since we have to renew the domain name each year. Even worse: this creates an half-empty web site, because the only thing it contains is the sales page and the product being selled. From another point of view if the sales page and the product are within a sub0domain or a blog with relevant content, the public's confidence is easier to build since the blog readers know the site is maintained by someone who will not dissapear from one day to the next with their money without giving them a service.

The only way to gain substantial amount with the "buy domain names" method is to be a celebrity and to have incredible revenues to invest in the publicity of the site and generate traffic. I'm not saying this is impossible, but it is an illusion to believe that just about anyone can obtain the same results than the marketing experts. Of course, the conditions in which marketers operate are very different than the ones of the average beginner. Logically, someone with the means to get millions of visitors each month will not see the same results than someone with hundreds, or tens of visitors.

Finally, for a beginner in the field, the best strategy is to install a blog, to talk about subjects that matter to him, and if some training is created then he should store it under a sub-domain or a sub-folder of his blog. That way, if he doesn't succeed at first, he will not have spent money uselessly. And the learning process, which matters the most, will not have cost him to much either.